Quotes About Rationality

if a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquillity

But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith.

A rational mind is sometimes the queerest mixture of rationality and irrationality on earth.

Freedom, although it has brought [modern man] independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.

Contra mi pensamiento, que trato de mantener dentro de los límites de la racionalidad, supe que nos habíamos vuelto a ver porque así estaba escrito desde los tiempos de la nada. Voluntades que se atraen siguiendo un papel predestinado.

It's an iron rule of mine that I never argue correlation versus causation in the middle of the night, especially when I had an alternative option.

Facts don't care about your feelings.

a society of essential oils and self-esteem has replaced a society of logic.

When facts become secondary to emotion, truth dies. And a society that doesn't value truth cannot survive.

It was left to Hume, once again, to completely circumscribe reason. "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions," Hume famously wrote, taking to its logical extreme the thought of his predecessors. "[Reason] cannot be the source of moral good or evil, which are found to have that influence."24

Facts have been buried to make way for feelings; a society of essential oils and self-esteem has replaced a society of logic.

Faith has its reasons and reason has its faiths.

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.

So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. Keimer

How convenient does it prove to be a rational animal, that knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do!

Anger is never without a reason but seldom with a good one.

Fear beats logic every time,

I know that war and mayhem run in our blood. I refuse to believe that they must dominate our lives. We humans are animals, too, but animals with amazing powers of rationality, morality, society. We can use our strength and courage not to savage each other, but to defend our highest purposes.

The legitimacy of coercive acts in a democracy arises from the process by which they are justified and by the degree to which we regard decisions as rational. If the justifications proceed properly, through recognized public institutions, and if they make sense to us, they are legitimate.

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy, as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.